Siegfried Landau, Conductor, Dies at 85

By DENNIS HEVESI

Published: February 21, 2007

CORRECTION APPENDED

Siegfried Landau, the founding conductor of what is now called the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, died on Monday night, along with his wife, Irene Gabriel, in a fire at their home in Brushton, in northern New York State. Mr. Landau was 85. His wife, a former ballet dancer, was 70.

The deaths were confirmed by Adam Teeter, a spokesman for the Brooklyn Philharmonic, which was known as the Brooklyn Philharmonia during Mr. Landau's tenure, from 1955 to 1971. From 1961 to 1968, Mr. Landau was also conductor of the White Plains Symphony.

From both podiums Mr. Landau regularly insisted on conducting new or rarely performed works -- sometimes to the consternation of orchestra board members.

''He put together a corps of top-notch, professional freelance players from New York,'' said Maurice Edwards, a former executive director of the Brooklyn Philharmonia and the author of ''How Music Grew in Brooklyn'' (Scarecrow Press, 2006). ''He did at least two or three new compositions each season, or revivals of neglected symphonic scores.''

Mr. Evans said Mr. Landau introduced audiences at the Brooklyn Academy of Music to Ernest Bloch's ''Symphony for Trombone and Orchestra,'' William Schuman's ''Symphony for Strings'' and works by Carl Nielsen, John Corigliano and Roy Harris. Mr. Landau also conducted concert versions of operas, had modern dancers on programs and started a series of free concerts for schoolchildren.

Born in Berlin on Sept. 4, 1921, Mr. Landau was the son of Ezekiel and Helen Grynberg Landau; his father was an Orthodox rabbi. He studied music at the Stern and Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatories in Germany, and in 1939, the family fled from Berlin to London, where Mr. Landau continued his musical studies at the Guildhall School.

A year later, Mr. Landau came to New York, where he studied with the conductor Pierre Monteux. By 1943, he had joined the faculty of the New York College of Music, now Mannes College of the New School. He was also a frequent guest conductor for the Carnegie Pops and Hunter College concerts.

In 1954, Mr. Landau married Ms. Gabriel. They are survived by two sons, Robert and Peter, and Mr. Landau's sister, Lotte Landau.

In 1971, he resigned from the Brooklyn Philharmonia when the orchestra, then financially troubled, shortened its season, limiting his innovative work. Ten year later, Mr. Landau resigned from the White Plains Symphony Orchestra, which had previously been known as the Music for Westchester Orchestra. At the time, the orchestra's president, Philip Carret, said the board objected to programs that included Sibelius's Symphony No. 4, Bartok's ''Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta'' and Beethoven's Fourth Symphony. ''Programs have to be such that we can raise money for the orchestra,'' Mr. Carret said. The orchestra stopped performing in 1987.

Mr. Landau's response was: ''If I stayed with the same old warhorses year after year, if I permitted the repertoire to stagnate and become impoverished, I would no longer be serving the course of music. What is of enormous importance is that we take a stand against a tendency that is absolutely deadening to the future of Western music.''

Photo: Siegfried Landau working with schoolchildren in about 1961. (Photo by Alan G. Angrist/PhotoArts)

Correction: February 23, 2007, Friday
An obituary on Wednesday about Siegfried Landau, the founding conductor of what is now the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, referred incorrectly to the history of the New York College of Music, whose faculty he joined in the 1940s. It became part of New York University in 1968; it is not now, nor has it ever been, Mannes College of the New School. (The music program at the New School is known as Mannes College of Music and has been part of the school since 1989.)

The obituary also misstated the age of Mr. Landau's wife, Irene Gabriel, who died with him in a fire at their home in Brushton, N.Y. She was 77, not 70.